The Russian elephant in the room
The biggest factor working against Georgiev staying in New York long-term is more than 4200 miles away in the Kontinental Hockey League of Russia. The Rangers drafted goaltender Igor Shestyorkin in the fourth round of the 2014 draft as a 17-year-old and he’s since gone on to dominate the KHL behind the most consistent team in the league.
In his three years as SKA St.Petersburg’s starter, Shestyorkin has averaged 31 starts, with 23 wins, a .939 save percentage and 1.51 goals against average. With the context of a KHL point being roughly 74 percent of a point in the NHL that still puts the Russian backstop in the upper echelon of the NHL.
Of course, the Russian league’s style of play is more skill based, played on a larger surface and extremely top heavy so those numbers even adjusted should be taken with a grain of salt. However, as both Talbot and Raanta proved, given time, Benoit Allaire, the Rangers’ goaltending coach, can turn water into wine.
Since the Rangers’ front office used a fourth-round pick on Shestyorkin it will value him more highly than Georgiev who was an amateur contract signing out of the Finnish league. Think of it as the difference between Tony DeAngelo and Neal Pionk. Although both are in the NHL one was a free agent out of college (Pionk) and one was a draft pick (DeAngelo.)
Given that the free agent was just a matter of having cap space available they are inherently less valuable and given less rope than a draft pick. It’s also why a former first-round pick will get an almost infinite number of chances to get their career on path whereas a free agent will end up in the ECHL if they can’t figure it out.